God desires that we live a full life in the fullness of His Spirit.  What follows from this point in most presentations of this reality is filled with so much falsehood that it has led people like me to be shy of speaking about the Holy Spirit.  Fullness of life in the Holy Spirit is framed either materially, physically or psychically so that walking in the Spirit or being filled with the Holy Spirit is made to look like your best life now as defined by you.  It is seen as either not getting sick or always getting healed when you do get sick.  As was announced in a full page advertisement in our local paper:  healing belongs to you.  There it was.  Right in front of me.  Heresy of the grossest sort portrayed in the language of the Spirit.  And those who would buy into that heresy would not be bothered by the picture of the woman pastor or elder neither of which is known in Scripture standing beside the slogan I guess to guarantee its truth.  All that the picture guaranteed was a double dose of the devilish displayed on the same page of the newspaper.  Not only is life in the fullness of the Spirit seen as physical but also portrayed as material.  We can use the Spirit like the advanced cash use of our credit card.  Ask and you will receive.  Pray with passion and the prosperity will follow.  Now any who believe this travesty of truth would at this point trash this entry and me because it is obvious to those of this ilk that I either do not have enough faith or that I have none at all.  In fact, some may be bothered that I am on the border of blasphemy here but the truth is biblically that I am on the border of nothing here.  I am standing in the center of what it means to live life to the full in the Holy Spirit and it has nothing to do with physical well being or material abundance, nor does it have to do with psychical wholeness.

Jesus was accused of being possessed of demons and dominated by the prince of demons (Mark 3 [+/-]Mark 3 [3:1]Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. [2]And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. [3]And he said to the man with the withered hand, "Come here." [4]And he said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent. [5]And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. [6]The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. [7]Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea [8]and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. [9]And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, [10]for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. [11]And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, "You are the Son of God." [12]And he strictly ordered them not to make him known. [13]And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. [14]And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach [15]and have authority to cast out demons. [16]He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); [17]James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); [18]Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, [19]and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. [20]Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. [21]And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, "He is out of his mind." [22]And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, "He is possessed by Beelzebul," and "by the prince of demons he casts out the demons." [23]And he called them to him and said to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? [24]If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. [25]And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. [26]And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. [27]But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house. [28]"Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, [29]but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"-- [30]for they were saying, "He has an unclean spirit." [31]And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. [32]And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you." [33]And he answered them, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" [34]And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! [35]For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother." (ESV)
).  Why?  Because he challenged a religious system that was the resource for life for so many while at that time robbing them of what life really is.  The major issue for those who accused Jesus of being demonic was that His casting out demons was for the glory of God that led to people who lived for the praise of God and the pursuit of His purpose even when doing so was hard.  Remember the man in the cemetery from whom Jesus expelled demons and when this man wanted to go with Jesus which was the easy road to travel, Jesus sent him to his home where they had once mocked him to make known among his family and friends what Jesus had done.  This is what life in the Spirit is.  It is not our having what we want and desire to help us and to make us happy.  It is our being so saturated by God in His power that we proclaim in every place the Good News of Salvation.  We don’t quench the Spirit by channeling the fire of God in the way that is best for us but we let the fire of God burn and if it consumes us and others are converted then so be it.  We do not grieve the Spirit by using the Spirit for our own goodies but we bring delight to God by desiring that the Spirit so consume us that we be used of God to deliver the goodies to others.  This is real life in the Spirit.   And it is really hard and I guess that is why the only way to live this life is by the power of the Spirit.

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